WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump is "evaluating the situation" of national security adviser Michael Flynn and his contacts with a Russian diplomat, the White House said Monday, extending the uncertainty around the status of a core aide.
Flynn has faced heated speculation about his future since reports surfaced anew last week that he had spoken with the Russian ambassador, weeks before Trump was inaugurated, about U.S. sanctions levied on Russia over its meddling in the election. Such discussions would be considered highly inappropriate given that the Obama administration was still setting foreign policy.
Flynn and other administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, had earlier rejected the allegations, but aides to Flynn backed off those denials after a Washington Post story and others last week detailed his phone calls with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, based on accounts from unnamed U.S. officials.
In a late afternoon statement Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump would speak with Pence and other officials about the future of Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general.
"The president is evaluating the situation," Spicer said. "He's speaking to Vice President Pence relative to the conversation the vice president had with Gen. Flynn and also speaking to various other people about what he considers the single most important subject there is: our national security."
Just three weeks after taking office, and after a campaign that highlighted his executive experience, Trump is facing calls both from inside and outside his administration to reshuffle his senior leadership team.
In a telling silence, the president ignored shouted questions from reporters about Flynn but was willing to talk about another member of his team, chief of staff Reince Priebus, whose job security has also been somewhat in doubt.
"Not a good job, a great job," Trump said when asked about Priebus' performance, one day after a conservative media mogul and Trump ally blamed Priebus, the former Republican National Committee chairman, for the administration's early missteps.
The White House offered no clear timeline for the president's "evaluating" of Flynn _ a term Spicer attributed to Trump and said best reflected his "current thinking." Flynn has not offered to resign, Spicer said.
Spicer's statement was also emblematic of the chaotic way information has flowed both internally and to the public in the early days of Trump's White House. The announcement of the review came just an hour after another senior official, Kellyanne Conway, told reporters and a national television audience that Flynn still had the president's "full confidence."
When reports several weeks ago first raised the possibility that Flynn and Kislyak may have discussed sanctions, Trump's transition team said the two focused on preparing for a phone conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that would take place after the inauguration.
The two also exchanged text messages on Dec. 25, wishing each other a merry Christmas, Spicer said at the time. "That was it, plain and simple," he said, basing the denials on Flynn's account.
But Flynn's aides have recently backed off those earlier denials, telling the Post last week that he "had no recollection of discussing sanctions," but that "he couldn't be certain that the topic never came up."
Any discussion about sanctions risked putting Flynn in violation of the Logan Act, a law that bars U.S. citizens from unauthorized interactions with foreign governments with an intent to influence government actions. No one has ever been prosecuted under the statute.
Spicer said Monday that it would not have been unusual for Flynn to be in contact with foreign diplomats at the time, as the designated incoming national security adviser. "That's a routine, normal and expected part of the job," he said, while also denying that Flynn would have been instructed to raise the issue.
Even as the president considers Flynn's fate, the national security adviser was continuing his duties, Spicer said, including discussions with the president over the weekend about North Korea's test of a ballistic missile and preparations for White House visits this week by foreign leaders.
Trump and Flynn were together much of the weekend as the president hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida estate. Aides were unaware of whether Trump raised the matter with Flynn personally, or if he had spoken about it already with Pence.
The vice president, just prior to the inauguration, said he had spoken with Flynn about reported contacts between him and Kislyak, and that Flynn had assured him their interactions were limited to holiday greetings and expressions of sympathy over an airplane crash.
"It was strictly coincidental that they had a conversation," Pence said in an interview with CBS News. "They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States' decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia."
A White House official said Flynn had apologized to Pence on Friday.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Monday that Trump should fire Flynn, calling his conduct "alarming."
"We have a national security adviser who cannot be trusted not to put Putin before America," she said.
